Michigan Department of Corrections Tries to Correct its Costly Conduct

 A recent Detroit Free Press article claims the Corrections Department wants to learn from its mistakes that have cost them roughly $200 million in lawsuit payouts since 2010. Forgive me if I'm skeptical. 

While I have no doubt that the department feels the pain of losing an average of nearly $17 million per year in lawsuit payouts, I have seen little in the way of cultural change within the department in my twelve-plus years in prison. Sure, the department has made some positive changes after political and social pressure mandated it. For example, solitary confinement is now used more sparingly than in the past, but it is still used, and sometimes unnecessarily. Additionally, use of force incidents are down, largely because many prisons now have video cameras that capture these incidents and make it more difficult for the department and staff to lie about what occurred. 

Other "mistakes" that have cost the department millions of dollars continue to occur with regularity. For example, prisoner property is still routinely mishandled, and medical incidents of deliberate indifference happen with frightening frequency. 

Perhaps it is applaudable that Director Washington has issued a memo directing staff to critique mistakes so as to learn from them. But in a culture where these "mistakes" are not seen as a problem because prisoners are not assumed to have inherent dignity, it's unlikely that much will change. Issuing memos will not give much force to change when staff members routinely ignore written policies that already lay out how these "mistakes" should be avoided in the first place.

It also strikes me as grossly hypocritical and ironic that the department defines its violations of civil rights and other problems as temporary "mistakes" while marking prisoners who have made "mistakes" as permanently criminal. The cultural attitude towards prisoners among staff is "once a criminal always a criminal." Most corrections department staff are not convinced, despite clear evidence of change, that prisoners can change. So, why should we be convinced that a department can change when it has a deeply entrenched culture that sees prisoners as unworthy of dignity?

I have met Director Washington personally, and I genuinely believe that she wants positive changes to occur in the department of corrections she oversees. I've seen evidence to that end. But I also believe that as an administrator of a highly bureaucratic, highly entrenched department, she faces a nearly impossible task to affect change among her staff. 

I hope I'm wrong. I hope that the wheels of change simply move slowly, but they still move in the right direction. I certainly have hope that many prisoners can change, so I do believe in change. If I'm right, though, and true change is highly unlikely to occur in the corrections department, Michigan taxpayers better get used to shelling out millions of dollars unnecessarily for decades to come.